JDR: Helldriver; The weirdest movie ever
Hello again empire! Its the Johnos. Today we are going to look at a movie I got for Christmas two years ago. Its a Japanese zombie movie called Helldriver, and its so weird I simply HAD to talk about it. Warning: this review will feature descriptions of the violent content in the film and i might swear a little in the process. Aughtta be fun. So here we go! Plot There really isn't one. I'll give you the setup of the movie though. We open up on a guy outside Tokyo climbing a large cement wall. He then throws body parts(where did he get them? i dont know.) to lure in the zombies. They have weird horns on their foreheads, that when removed, kill them. He proceeds to used a hook to decapitate them and take the horns off the heads. When a head is torn off, there is a hilariously huge fountain of blood(this will become a trend later on). He then collects horns in a montage with silly punk music. Why is he collecting horns? I'll explain later. So, he ends up being scared by a long necked zombie and falling off the wall. In most cases, he'd be dead. But no. he stands on their heads to stay out of their reach. This makes the zombies form a massive towering pile of zombies with this guy on the top trying to not get eaten. Then literally out of fucking NOWHERE, a truck does a barrel roll through the pile. A mysterious girl comes out of the truck with a motor on her chest and a chainsaw katana. She then precedes to kill all of the zombies with more blood in that short scene than any American made movie. She then pole-dances on the long necked zombie(WHAAAAAT?!?!?) and then kills it. Think thats the whole movie? Nope. Just the first five minutes. We then get a little flashback to the girl's past. Her name is Kika and she has a terrible life. Her dad is crippled, the family is poor, and her mother and uncle are evil, abusive, murdering cannibals. Yes, i just said that. Deal wit it. One day, She comes home to find her mother and uncle cutting up and eating her father's leg meat. Her uncle is a creepy guy, always addressing Kika by staring with wide eyes and a huge grin and saying "Kika-chan!" He starts all of his lines directed at Kika with that. Its so goddamn creepy. Then the mother (shes actually credited as "The Bitch", which is what Kika calls her) starts abusing Kika and laughing. Its pretty disturbing. Then the mother lights the father on fire because... reasons, and Kika grabs a conveniently swastika-shaped beam and uses it to brand a swastika on her uncle's forehead.(ps, the guy has swastikas all over his outfit as well) She then runs away. Her uncle throws knives at her and gets her across the face with one. Her mother kills two cops nearby and dances in the blood fountain to classical music. She them shows up on top of the car by Kika(HOW?!) and lifts her up on top of the car with one friggin hand. She be pretty strong I guess. As she chokes Kika, a meteorite, yes a goddamn meteorite, hits the mother and blows a hole in her chest. Somehow still alive(I think she had superpowers even before she became the zombie queen. and yes she later becomes the zombie queen.) she then rips out Kika's heart to replace her own. And it works too. Then for some reason, Kika and her mother get frozen in amber. The mother's cocoon starts spewing a black ash that spreads across the entire north half of the country and turns all who breathe it into zombies. These zombies are smart, some even capable of speech, and more or less become an evil and cannibalistic version of themselves. Now that i think about it, that may stem from the habits of Kika's mother. If it would have hit Kika, would it have made all the zombies like her? We will never know. But anyway, the government builds a wall that separates the country in two halves. The south becomes overpopulated and and live in poverty. The north is infested with zombies, with only a few normal humans left. Remember the guy collecting the horns? Well, the horns are ground up and used as a drug. But the horns are pretty dangerous, as they are highly unstable and about as combustible as pure nitroglycerin. There is also a who political issue where the prime minister supports a religious cult that believes that the zombies are still human and can be tamed. There is also a new rule that three families must share a single house to make space for everyone. This results in a bloodbath, as one psychopath shared living space with about a dozen people. Food is getting scarce. Sushi is now a tiny piece of whale blubber with a single piece of rice on it. The most popular food is pan-fried cockroaches. Meanwhile, Kika is found and taken to Tokyo, where she is put into a top secret program to create super soldiers by replacing their hearts with motors that power chain-swords. Thats pretty awesome. They then toss her out near the wall. where she runs into two horn collectors being attacked by both the wall guards and zombies. Kika quickly figures out how to be a badass, and they fight their way out in an unintentionally silly fight. Seriously, zombies suddenly produce chainsaws. Kika cuts off their hands, but the hands somehow keep attacking with the chainsaws. And of coarse, there is the extreme amount of blood. Fun facts: they used an entire oil tanker full of fake blood to make this movie. They had two but they only used one. They also used fire hoses for all of the blood spray. That was fun facts with Johnos. So anyway, they take the collected horns back to the dealers, and demand more payment. They are then arrested by the MPs. Meanwhile, the prime minister is giving a speach in front of the wall. His second in command is part of a plot to overthrow him so he can send in the troops and wipe out all of the zombies. He blows a hole in the wall after the prime minister announces equal rights for zombies, and he is immediately attacked. The soldiers cant help him because he said that zombies were human and any acts of homicide against them are condemned. He takes it back as he is torn apart. And then the OPENING credits roll. Thats right, that was just the first twenty minutes, and from here it gets weirder, but luckily less complicated. Kika and her new friends are sent on a mission to reach the zombie queen, plant a homing beacon for nuclear warheads and return for a reward. They head out there, some hilarious action sequences happen, they meet Japanese Clint Eastwood, they do more crazy stuff at a zombie bar, then they do More crazy stuff and they finally get to the zombie queen. But she has a weird trick up her sleeve. She forms all of the zombies around her to make a giant made of zombies. It catches the nukes and uses them to fly. Kika climbs on and rides along, fighting both her uncle and her mother. She eventually kills both, gets her heart back, and then all of the zombies die and fall down in Tokyo. The End. Unless you include the three spin-off shorts. Which I don't. Moving on. What I Thought Of It Finally we get this far. Holy SHIT!!! This movie is hilarious and action packed! It accurately portrays the distress in Tokyo, even though it doesn't matter to the plot at all. Thanks Japan! Afterword This movie is worth watching if you can find it. 7/10 simply because it's cheesiness is so funny. Sorry this took so long to finish, I got a lot going on right now, and this article is huge. Well, I don't want to waste any more of your time, so good day peepskulls! Category:Review